My military training escapes me. I have no comportment. My head falls limply like a newborn who hasn’t the neck strength to sit up. Tears flow easily and burn my skin. I wrench my hands together and fixate on a hangnail, picking it until it bleeds. My world whirls and my thoughts race. The air conditioning in the office combined with my sweat-soaked shirt from the June humidity gives me a chill. It is like Black Friday in my brain as my thoughts jostle for position waiting for the doors to open and bust the dam holding back the masses. I think to myself, “Frickin-A! I AM crazy. Fucking crazy. Crazier than crazy. Karma is a bitch, and this bitch has me beat.” I can’t understand why I am still alive. I always knew I’d be dead before twenty-five, yet I am still here two months before my twenty-fifth birthday. I raise my eyes and connect my gaze with the college campus psychiatrist. I am defeated. Vulnerable. Helpless.

leaf descends stilly

onto the empty playground

a room of one’s own

I go back to my first encounter with a shrink. 1985. Sixth grade. My teacher accuses me of turning the class against him and suggests I have anger issues. The meetings of the minds determine sessions with the school psychologist are in order. She is a social worker. I am eleven years old with all the answers, yet I refuse to speak. I am certain this cramped windowless space was a janitor’s closet before it became the school shrink’s office. The scents of pine and pink toilet solution still cling to the thick stale air. I cough and allow my hand to linger in front of my mouth, using it as a mask.

“Do you know why you are here?” The shrink tries to start a conversation. I am resolute to reveal nothing and to remain silent. “How do you feel today?” She attempts again. I respond with a stare. “Do you have a pet?” My lips are sealed. The powers that be decide to pull other kids into my sessions. Kids I admire. Like that sandy-haired kid Tommy. “Don’t you want to play Connect Four with Tommy?” I don’t fall for the shrink’s little mind games. I know what she is up to. Trying to get me to talk. I see her do it with Tommy and his cousin Mike. They sing like canaries. Spilling beans all over the place. Not me. Finally, the shrink gives up. I win. I am given the go-ahead to proceed as a normal kid on a normal track. No behavioral or emotional issues for me.

wind whips piercingly

through layers protecting souls

their spirit wills hope

I peek through my tears, and my vision is distorted. The campus doctor’s face now appears as though it is from the brush of Edvard Munch. I blink, clarifying my sight but not my spirit. He is waiting for me to talk. I came to him, after all.

“Um...” I stammer. “I have bad thoughts,” my voice is hushed. Each word exhaled through my separated lips are bits of the dandelion’s pappus floating frightfully away from the stem.

“When you say ‘bad thoughts’, what do those look like to you?” the well-intentioned doctor asks.

Suddenly the air in the room is scorching and dank. I gasp for breath. I am in a scene straight from Grand Central Station during PM rush hour in July. Subway and commuter trains mix with throngs of humanity moving every which way. Sweat drips down my back. My mind whirrs deafeningly in concert with intense mugginess. I struggle to reflect inwardly and think to myself:

“I want to step in front of a city bus as it darts down the road. I want to duct tape my mouth shut and shackle my legs. Lock myself seat-belted in my car as I shift into gear–bind my hands behind my back then guide the vehicle off the road into Long Island Sound so I will be swallowed whole by the estuary. I want to jump into the bay—tied-up while suffocating. I want to stare into the lights of a speeding train, confronting it head-on. I want to kill myself. I want to die. A painful death. A tortured death. But I’m a fuck-up. A failure. It won’t work. I’ll try and fail and be more of a burden on everyone. I should have studied engineering. Of course, they say most mechanical defects occur due to human error. Who knows if even then I could grasp the concepts enough to ensure a botch-free suicide?”

I shrug my shoulders, shift in my chair and slide the edge of my bloodied fingertip between my teeth.  “Umm...I don’t know,” I equivocate. “Nothing really specific. I guess I just want to go to sleep and not wake up.”

Slip seeds into soil

relentlessly nurturing

Behold - they blossom!

We are over a year into the Covid-19 pandemic protocols, and I am accustomed to teletherapy now. I glance at my phone and am relieved that this is a voice call rather than video. I need to focus on my thoughts. I have no time to concern myself with how I look or imagine what my therapist might be observing in my room.

“It’s just…” I begin uneasily. “I have been in treatment for almost twenty-three years. Twenty-three years that I have been overtaken by suicidal thoughts in some form. Every day, every hour. Sometimes incessantly. Prior to that, I remember having these really terrible thoughts throughout my lifetime. Even as early as the age of eleven. Active suicidal thoughts. And I just realized something…” my words are delivered like a child meticulously coloring inside the lines, evenly and smoothly, without applying too much or too little pressure to the crayon. 

“Oka-ay...” I can feel my counselor’s impatient curiosity through his drawn-out emphasis on the long vowel. 

Clarity eclipses confusion. I have cracked the code to a part of my psyche that I did not know previously existed. My thoughts have fallen into formation like an Army battalion prepared for a pass in review inspection by the installation commander. I am left with an ironic, yet absurd truth.

“I don’t open my eyes in the morning with the disappointment that I am still alive. I don’t close my eyes at night with the prayer that I will not awaken the next day. And my concentration isn’t constantly broken because my brain is hatching a scheme on how to kill myself. But then there is THIS: 

“I don’t want to die anymore—so now I wonder—what is my reason to live?” 

day feels forever

sun nourishes the spirit

forever feels days

EPILOGUE

If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide or feelings of desperation, dial 988 for the U.S. National Suicide Crisis Lifeline — Armed Forces Veterans dial 988, then press 1.